Come fall, in the big sky desert of New Mexico, there will be a revolution in the skies.

Space innovators from around the world will converge outside the city of Las Cruces to compete in the first annual X Prize Cup by test flying their own rockets and spacecraft with a single goal in mind:

Take access to space out of the hands of government and put it in the laps of everyday people, vc who will be able to leave Earth and head into a realm where only astronauts now go.

Their hero may be among them — Burt Rutan, whose single-seat SpaceShipOne dramatically opened the era of space tourism last year when it flew from an airfield in California and touched orbit.

The week-long exposition and glaring media attention it will bring will be another bold statement that a new era of space exploration, spawning industries and jobs, has arrived.

Florida — and more specifically, Cape Canaveral — could have been the site of this cosmic barnstorming. But the state’s political leaders blew it.Click here to read more.